In aircraft construction, efforts are being made to use as load-bearing components increasingly components which are composed wholly or partly of fibre-reinforced composite materials, for example carbon fibre-reinforced plastics (CFRP). For example, DE 10 2007 062 111 A1 describes a transverse support structure which is composed of carbon fibre-reinforced plastic and serves to support the individual panels of an aircraft floor system for separating a passenger cabin from a cargo compartment arranged below the passenger cabin. Furthermore, it is known, for example from DE 10 2004 001 078 A1, to provide aircraft fuselage segments with a skin which is designed with a sandwich construction and made of fibre-reinforced composite materials. Finally, DE 10 2008 032 834 A1 relates to a stiffening component composed of a fibre-reinforced composite material and configured in the form of an omega stringer.
To produce aircraft structural components from fibre-reinforced composite materials, as a rule a multilayer laminate is firstly built up from fibre prepregs. The fibre prepregs comprise a woven fabric or laid scrim of reinforcing fibres provided with a surface layer made of an uncured, thermoset plastic material, for example an epoxy resin material. The laminate can be built up manually or in an automated manner. Subsequently, the thermoset plastic material deposited on the surfaces of the fibres is cured in an autoclave cycle under pressure and/or elevated temperature, so that a composite material with a matrix made of a cured thermoset plastic and reinforcing fibres embedded in the matrix is obtained. To connect two aircraft structural components composed of fibre-reinforced composite materials, adhesively bonded connections may be used. Alternatively to this, in order to create a particularly stable laminate connection, the components may be brought into contact with one another in the uncured state and subsequently jointly cured.